Watering when Im away!

[murphyjf]

So Im away on thursday for 5 days I was planning to ask the hubby but I'm not 100% sure I could trust him.

I can water them on wednesday night, and I'll be back the following tuesday!

I'm growing strawberries, onions, peppers, sweetcorn, carrots so whats the minimum I could water them or is there a way to set up a watering system I have no outdoor tap

[veggiechicken]

Hi murphy and welcome.
Are all these veggies outdoors or undercover? I rarely water anything that's outdoors - relying on the rain to do that for me.
Could you add your location to your profile please - if you live in the rainy west, as I do, you may have no problems whatsoever

[Bigmallly]

Hello welcome to the vine, I'm assuming everything is outdoors apart from the Peppers. If that's the case leave all the outdoor stuff or water it just before you go away. That only leaves the Peppers for your hubby to look after.

[Bren In Pots]

Unless your plants are seedling they'll be fine left for that amount of time and like BM says its only the peppers that might need some.

[murphyjf]

they are actually all in the greenhouse I found they are growing better in there in the wet northern ireland weather plus my kids tend to destroy stuff that it left out!

[Small pumpkin]

Hello Murphyjf welcome to the vine.
I'm with you 100% on not trusting to other half mine isn't aloud in the poly tunnel without supervision
So I'm afraid the only advise I can give you is threaten him .
You know the sort of thing," if you let those plants die by not watering them after all the hard work I've put in, I will ............."
I will let you finish that off. I might get my self into some hot water if I gave you some of the versions I use
Sorry I can't be more helpful.

[Bill HH]

If you really can't trust him to water the plants then hire an attractive female gardener to come and do it, I can guarantee he will be out there every day.

I think seriously you could get away with giving everything a thorough soaking plus trusting him to water on say day three with notes all over the kitchen to remind him and back up phone calls. Also a pre holiday lesson on how to water properly might not go amiss.

[gardening_gal]

I asked someone to water my plants in my polytunnel whilst I was away for one day from early morning to night.

I came back to wilted plants left right and centre and celery that looked dead.

Despite their protestations, it was clear they hadn't opened the tunnel when they were supposed to, they had missed several plants out whilst watering and the ones that did get water simply didn't get enough.

I suggest you treat him like an alien new to this planet and give him exact and precise instructions including times and amounts of water etc instead of assuming common sense would dictate.

Impress upon him the consequences of not doing the job properly and by that I mean how easy and quickly the plants will die if they are left in heat without enough water.

Unfortunately, unless you have a large waterbutt, a length of hosepipe and various connectors, there isn't really anything that will do the job. You could buy some of those Big Drippa watering bags but that would be costly and wouldn't last for 5 days.

I suspect you're reliant on hubby.

Good luck.

[Martin H]

Gardening gal has said it all.

Especially this:

I suggest you treat him like an alien new to this planet and give him exact and precise instructions including times and amounts of water etc instead of assuming common sense would dictate.

Impress upon him the consequences of not doing the job properly and by that I mean how easy and quickly the plants will die if they are left in heat without enough water.

People (even spouses!) are generally happy to help but unless they are gardeners they won't "get it". You need to be gentle but firm, like you would when explaining something important to a 5 year old.

[chris]

I'd give them a heavy watering the day before yore off and mulch around the plants heavily. That'll conserve water, by stopping evaporation.

I haven't watered my allotment apart from when I initially panted things out.


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[murphyjf]

asked him repeated numerous times and reminded him on skype, spoke to them yesterday and my 10 year old said he finally went out to water them yesterday! I've been gone from thursday and that was monday! he said some of the stuff looked dead! needless to say I'm pretty gutted! hoping its not too bad when I get back tomorrow.

Do you think I'll be able to recover anything? lack of water in a greenhouse for 5 days :-( only thing is its base is grass and there was a lot of rain before I left hoping that might have helped!